Noted Warmist: Scientists 'Endorse Al Gore Even Though They Know What He’s Saying Is Exaggerated and Misleading'

A noted "warmist" on Monday said scientists that believe the theory of global warming will "endorse Al Gore even though they know what he’s saying is exaggerated and misleading."

Richard Muller of the University of California at Berkeley also told Capitol Report New Mexico, "He’ll talk about polar bears dying even though we know they’re not dying" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CAPITOL REPORT NEW MEXICO: Do you feel you’re sort of being pulled by the different extremes in this argument? That people that do fervently believe that global warming needs to be addressed and those that are skeptical are pulling what you say one way or the other?

RICHARD MULLER, BERKELEY EARTH SURFACE TEMPERATURE PROJECT: When you use the word “believe,” that, that makes me think, “Wait, here’s someone who’s starting with a conclusion." We are not trying to address the true believers. There are people who dismiss global warming completely and never will. We can’t convince them. We’re trying to address the people who still have open minds.

CRNM: What about the true believers in the other side?

MULLER: Neither side.

CRNM: Right.

MULLER: No, the true believers are people who’ve made up their mind. I list Al Gore and Tom Friedman. They’re not scientists, and so they reach their belief and then they push it in order to try to do some good.

CRNM: So, are you uncomfortable with the, you probably saw the article in the New Mexican today…

MULLER: No, I haven’t actually.

CRNM: Oh, okay, well it’s actually an Associated Press article.

MULLER: Oh, yeah.

CRNM: But basically you in the Al Gore camp.

MULLER: That’s wrong.

CRNM: You feel uncomfortable with that?

MULLER: I don’t feel uncomfortable. It’s just a mistake. I’m in the Al Gore camp? That’s ridiculous. I wrote a book, my "Physics and Technology for Future Presidents" book. Look at the last third of that. What I point out is that most of what appears in "An Inconvenient Truth" is either absolutely wrong, exaggerated, or misleading.

A few minutes later:

CRNM: But it also seems that, I mean, you’re a scientist. Dr. Curry’s a scientist. But yet somehow this seems fall sometimes into the realm of religion.

MULLER: Well, it does.

CRNM: For one side or the other.

MULLER: I fault science for this. I think many scientists have gone along with the following train of thought. They look at the data. They look in great detail. They analyze it. And they say, “Oh my G-d, global warming is real. It’s about what we expect. If this is true, we’re going to have five degrees of global warming in the next 60 years. That’s going to be awful.” So the scientists do that. Now they can publish this, and show their data and so on, and the public will pay no attention to it because it’s all hidden in careful data analysis.

So, at this point they say, “The public’s not listening. I know this is urgent, therefore I have to say things that the public will understand.” And they will then endorse Al Gore even though they know what he’s saying is exaggerated and misleading. You know, he’ll talk about polar bears dying even though we know they’re not dying. And, and I feel scientists unfortunately too many of them have abandoned the scientific method precisely because the problem is so important. And I feel exactly the opposite: when the problem is really important, then we have to hunker down, and really use the best methods of science.

Pretty disgusting picture being painted by a scientist on the global warming is real side of the climate change debate.

Almost exactly what skeptics have been saying for years: scientists pushing the global warming myth "have abandoned the scientific method" and will use any tactic, including "endors[ing] Al Gore even though they know what he’s saying is exaggerated and misleading," to advance their agenda.

For those unfamiliar with Muller, as NewsBusters reported Sunday, he heads up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project and has found himself in the middle of a growing controversy because of his statements regarding the group's findings.

The climate scientist who has caused an uproar by writing a recent global warming article in the opinion section of The Wall Street Journal told Capitol Report New Mexico on Monday (Oct. 31) he probably would not have written the article if he had known the Journal would change the headline of the piece.

“The Wall Street Journal article, they changed it, they changed the title,” Richard Muller said while attending a conference on global and regional climate change in Santa Fe. “My title was, ‘Let’s cool the warming debate.’ They changed it to ‘An end of skepticism.’ That was not me, they did not seek my approval.”

I followed up: “So you disagree with that?”

Muller: “Oh yeah. It doesn’t represent the article. If you read the article you’ll find that it doesn’t say what that title says. That was their contribution.”

Later in the interview, Capitol Report New Mexico asked Muller if he regretted writing the piece — not because he doesn’t stand by his research — but because he felt the headline was misleading.

“I don’t think I would have done it if they had told me they were going to change the headline,” Muller said.

Fascinating. As NewsBusters reported, this lead a number of people at the Washington Post including Eugene Robinson to further miscast Muller's views. Muller was asked about this Monday:

CRNM: I pick up an editorial by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post. It says what Dr. Muller says proves that these skeptics are wrong and they gotta get on this cap-and-trade train.

RICHARD MULLER: That’s ridiculous. I mean, some people say, I’ve proved that there was no ClimateGate. No, the ClimateGate thing was a scandal, it’s terrible what they did, it’s shameful the way they hid the data. There’s real skepticism, valid skepticism about the degree of warming that’s caused by humans and at this meeting today, we’re hearing a range of things that were not incorporated in the IPCC report and need to be incorporated in the future. The issue isn’t whether there’s global warming; it’s how much there is. And how much of that is caused by humans? And there’s still a lot of uncertainty that and the skeptics are raising very good points on that issue.

Nobel laureate Al Gore also praised Muller's supposed end of skepticism remarks, which is rather comical given what Muller apparently thinks of him.

But Muller himself is not above reproach. In the CRNM interview, he claimed that he didn't say that people should no longer be skeptical about global warming, and this assumption was created by the Journal changing his headline.

Without good answers to all these complaints, global-warming skepticism seems sensible. But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.

Over the last two years, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project has looked deeply at all the issues raised above. I chaired our group, which just submitted four detailed papers on our results to peer-reviewed journals. We have now posted these papers online at www.BerkeleyEarth.org to solicit even more scrutiny. [...]

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate.

As such, irrespective of the headline and quite contrary to what he told CRNM Monday, most of Muller's Journal article did indeed make the case that skepticism of global warming is now unfounded as a result of BEST's research.

This is why many scientists on the skeptical side of this debate see Muller as a warmist who's trying to appear impartial in this process while he clearly is a global warming advocate.

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